Acapella Versus Avantgarde

According to the Aaudio Imports web site, the Acapella Violon ($35K) is twice the price of the AG Duo. By that alone, wouldn't you expect considerably more from it than the AG?

As Mike from Audio Federation suggests, the visual similarities between the two would beg comparisons. However, with the Acapella full horn line running from $26K all the way to $350K, it would seem that we're talking apples & oranges.

Those Acapella's sure are a work of art.

I am also an Acapella owner (Campagnile Highs), have a friend who owns Violon Highs and the new La Campanella and would like to address address several issues: i) maintenance of the plasma tweeter, ii) coherence of the drivers and iii) bass. In over four years, the tweeters have proved almost bullet proof. They have an automatic mode that turns them on only when a signal is running through them, thus significantly decreasing wear on the tubes and quartz rod that generates the plasma. In full time, 24 hour a day use, one might expect to retube and replace the rods after about five years. In the automatic mode, who knows? The tubes are user replaceable and dealers should be able to replace the quartz rods which are not hideously expensive.

Coherence. This is an area where Acapella has been very successful. The mating between the horn and plasma tweeter is extremely good to excellent. The mating between the horn and the woofer can be very good but is dependent on the amp used and on placement in the room and cabling. This improves greatly during break-in but it does take the woofers a long time to break-in/loosen up. As this happens, efficiency improves, the woofers play lower in frequency and are more dynamic. None of these (with the exception of the La Campanella) is really a near field speaker. They benefit from a larger room. In the wrong room with the wrong associated equipment, some sounds may localize on the midrange horn. Having said this, even the Campaniles benefit from a really excellent subwoofer but only with respect to the bottom octave. Acapella seems to have made a conscious choice to design for coherence over having the bottom octave. Normally this is not a problem, but with an really excellent sub there are gains in depth, image density and low end power where present on the software. This is a really easy speaker with which to listen to music.

As you might guess, the Acapella cables are a really synergistic match for the speakers. Acapella uses the Einstein electronics to voice the speakers at the factory and the combination is magical.

Thanks for the explanation Gregm - I have wondered what would move one on from Acapella's - no answer yet then! Hi to Fred too - good to see that you remain very happy with your Camapniles. Despite bothering everyone, over a few years, I still haven't made the jump. My room would be too small and up to now my electronics not up to the speakers, but I'm getting there slowly!

Murray

I heard the Avantgarde Trios with Basshorns just recently. I thought they were fantastic. I have Sound Labs and I didn't think the Avantgardes gave too much away in the areas of transparency and inner detail to the big electrostats. As far as integration and coherency goes, this all-horn system is seemless at all volume levels.
I can't see how a speaker like the Campanile could be as coherent across all frequencies at all volume levels when it is using 3 separate technologies. How four 10" dynamic drivers could keep up with a plasma tweeter when volume levels approach 100dB SPL is beyond me.

I've never heard the Avantgardes in any situation that allowed extended critical listening, but I've spent a few hours listing to the Acapella Triolon Excaliburs. As I said in another thread, these speakers redefined for me what recorded music was capable of, and it took less than a minute for me to realize how much better they were than anything I'd ever heard. I look forward to a good demo of Trios at some point, but for now the Triolons are the speaker that dreams are made of. I don't expect that to change anytime in the near future, but of course I'm always open to other speakers being as good or better.

For what it's worth, I heard the Acapellas at Audio Federation. I have no affiliation with them, other than being an extremely satisfied customer (not of Acapella speakers, unfortunately... maybe someday!).